Posted On: Wednesday, June 2, 2021

IDA status to ICAR-NBAIM

Acquisition of the status of International Depository Authority (IDA) to “National Agriculturally Important Microbial Culture Collection” (NAIMCC) a unit of ICAR-NBAIM by World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), Geneva

National Agriculturally Important Microbial Culture Collection (NAIMCC), a unit of the ICAR-National Bureau of Agriculturally Important Microorganisms, Maunath Bhanjan, Uttar Pradesh, India  under the aegis of Indian Council of Agriculture Research (ICAR) & Department of Agricultural Research and Education (DARE), Government of India, New Delhi has acquired the status International Depository Authority (IDA) by World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), Geneva,  under Article 7 (1) of the Budapest treaty by its notification No. 338 w.e.f. July 28, 2020.  Eighty two countries are part of this treaty and there are about 48 IDAs across 26 countries. The microbial resource centres having status of  IDA mainly accepts and maintains microorganisms for patenting of work related to live organisms that have medical, agricultural and other uses. In view of this an agreement called as Budapest Treaty was passed in 1977 for deposition of microorganisms in culture collection centres for the purposes of patent procedure. NAIMCC will be the third IDA of the country after Microbial Type Culture Collection (MTCC), Chandigarh and National Centre for Microbial Resources (NCMR), Pune.  As IDA, NAIMCC will be entrusted to conserve microorganisms used to develop patents and also to conserve newly described microbial taxa as a requirement for valid taxonomic publication.  NAIMCC is a designated microbial repository for agriculturally important microorganisms (AIMs) under the National Biodiversity Act, 2002 and is a member of World Federation of Culture Collections (WFCC).  Currently, NAIMCC holds accessions of 6907 AIMs including 2595 bacteria, 3981 fungi and 331 cyanobacteria.

The notification is available on http://www.ipindia.nic.in and on WIPO website with the link: https://www.wipo.int/treaties/en/ShowResults.jsp?country_id=ALL&start_year=ANY&end_year=ANY&treaty_all=ALL&search_what=N.

The Bureau wishes to share success story in detail. The correspondents may contact through email: director.nbaim@icar.gov.in or mobile 9650377776